So farewell, I hope, to the scientific career of Guillermo Gonzalez. Once a promising astrophysicist, with several highly cited papers to his name, Gonzalez's speciality was looking for extrasolar planets.
His early promise was not fulfilled when he came to Iowa State University in 2001, where he spent some time promoting theories of design and purpose in the universe. This year he was put forward for, but denied a tenured position in the physics faculty. Gonzalez and his intelligent-design cronies moaned that this was discrimination based on his personal beliefs.
In this week's Nature, evolutionary biologist Harilaos Lessios rather cheekily points out that Gonzalez's appeal against the decision rests on the admission that his beliefs are indeed religious in origin. Whoops. The US judiciary has said it, now ID's top brass have admitted it: intelligent design is a religious ideology.
The decision to refuse him a permanent position relied on a number of factors, typical of academic recruitment. These included his publication record, success as a supervisor of graduate students and his ability to secure grant money. On all three, he appears to have fallen short. Eli Rosenberg, a professor in the department of physics at ISU, noted that Gonzalez's views on intelligent design, although discussed, did not play a significant part in the recruitment board's decision. Yet, with typical bleating style, this is what the ID advocates focus on. "They are penalising an associate professor who's doing his job because he has views they disagree with" says Michael Behe, a key ID champion. Richard Dawkins describes Behe as a "straightforward creationist" and correctly deconstructs his thoughts on irreducible complexity as argument from ignorance. I prefer to say it thus: "Just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean that I don't."
The intellectually bankrupt intelligent design movement is losing momentum. Gonzalez is a fellow of Discovery Institute, the pseudo-scientific face of creationism, and Behe its ineffectual star witness in the Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District trial in Pennsylvania, in which Judge John Jones ruled that intelligent design "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents".
The institute is said to be funded in part by ultra-conservatives like Howard Ahmanson and John Prescott's buddy Philip Anschutz, who I imagine regard the likes of Gonzalez and Behe with their brand of "scientific", non-biblical creationism as "dangerous intellectuals". The Institute's main drive has been neutered by the constitution. Will Ahmanson stick with it, or return to some of his other delightful fundamentalist causes, such as funding a libertarian thinktank which once tried to ban Gabriel García Márquez's masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Here in the UK we still have the amusingly titled Truth in Science organisation, backed by the Discovery Institute. At its helm we have Andrew McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics at University of Leeds. McIntosh believes that trilobites were rendered extinct by Noah's flood. Can someone tell me (and I'm sure you will) how more than 17,000 species of critter that lived in water died in a flood?
Do these views affect the daily work of a physicist? Much of the day-to-day grind of being a research scientist can be pursued without thinking a great deal about the underlying philosophy of science. Discussions about Popper were not frequent in the lab in which I studied. Nevertheless, hypotheses, experiment, falsification and prediction were always at the core of our research.
Saying, whether in 4004 BC or 13 billion years ago, that "God made it" is not falsifiable and therefore not science. I know that, were I in a position to offer Guillermo Gonzalez tenure, I would deny it for the precise reason that his, yes, religious views about purpose in the universe explicitly mean he is a crap scientist, regardless of his ability to generate valid data.
Furthermore, I hope I would have the conviction to say the same if he hadn't failed in the other academic criteria. As a vocal supporter of the demonstrably unscientific guff that is intelligent design, Gonzalez displays ignorance of the scientific process, and appears to wilfully defy it. And for that reason, he neither deserves the use of the facilities of a university to conduct scientific research, nor the privilege of teaching the next generation of scientists.